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A panel that's trying to keep dementia from bankrupting the country is seeking a member who is already starting to suffer from Alzheimer's or a related condition.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has posted a "nominees wanted" notice in the Federal Register on behalf of HHS and the Advisory Council on Alzheimer's Research, Care and Services.

Nominees are due June 14. The successful nominee will serve a two-year term as a "special government employee."

The open position on the advisory council is for a "new, non-federal" individual who already has a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or a similar form of dementia.

Congress included the law that created the advisory council in the National Alzheimer’s Project Act of 2011 (NAPA). The council is supposed to help its parent, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) come up with a plan for preventing and curing Alzheimer’s by 2025.

In recent months, the council has talked about matters such as allocation of research funding and efforts to develop quality measures for dementia care.

The council has talked in passing about private long-term care insurance (LTCI) and other forms of private insurance, but it has no members from the LTCI community, and members of the insurance industry have not been visible at the council's public meetings or in the compendia of public comments submitted in writing.